barberic wife: New York City

Eric and I decided that for every 5 year anniversary we would take a trip somewhere (just the two of us). That means we will probably do a small/no family vacation those years in order to save money for us to be able to do something without kids. We love to travel and had a hard time deciding where to go this year for our upcoming 5 year anniversary! We narrowed it down that we wanted to go somewhere that neither of us have been before--and came down to two choices....NYC or San Francisco. We ultimately picked NYC and started planning for our trip about 6 months ago.

We decided to go in late August for a few reasons. Our anniversary in actually in late November, which would be really cool to see NYC then with the lights, Rockefeller tree, Macy's parade, etc. but the price of everything also goes up for that time of the year. We also wanted to really be able to get out and explore without having to worry about cold and snow....so we chose late August (after our summer activities have slowed down). We planned our trip for Thursday-Monday, long enough to feel like we could really see things in the city, but not to overextend the boys time with grandparents and our money!

We flew out on Thursday from Kansas City and arrived at LaGuardia about 3:00pm. We had a car pick us up from the airport (so we could get our bearings and get to our hotel). We used Hotwire months ago to make our hotel reservations. I know it can be a gamble, but we felt like based on the information given about our reservation, that we would get the Warwick Hotel....and we were right! A few weeks ago, Eric was looking up TripAdvisor things on the Warwick and noticed that many of the comments had been replied to personally by the General Manager. He had the idea to email the GM and just tell him that we were coming in to celebrate our anniversary and that we were excited to explore the city and stay in his hotel. A couple of days before we left, he got 2 email backs! One was from a new GM and one from Guest Relations, but they basically said that his email had gotten lost in the previous GM's inbox and that they hoped we would have a great trip...and wanted to send something up to our room and give us an upgrade (if available when we checked in). How nice is that?! So we didn't know exactly what to expect when we got there, but I'll just show you the pictures!

I think we expected the smallest hotel room possible and ended up getting upgraded to a suite. And about 15 minutes after arrival, there was a knock on the door with champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. Because we booked on Hotwire, we probably saved about $450 compared to just booking through the hotel for a normal, 1 queen bedroom. With this upgrade, this room probably cost around $1200 more than what we paid. That is great guest relations! And all because Eric went out on a limb and sent an email.

We didn't have much planned for Thursday, but decided that we wanted to go to Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center observation deck), grab dinner, and then walk through Times Square. We figured it would be an early night after traveling, so just wanted to keep it low key. We ended up going to Milk Bar for dessert on our way back to the hotel. Christina Tosi, the newest chef on Masterchef, is the founder/owner of Milk Bar. They are known for making things with 'cereal milk ice cream'...and it pretty much tastes just like that. Eric tried the chocolate cereal milk shake and a compost cookie. I had the birthday cake shake and cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate chip cookie. Be prepared for lots of selfies!